Chelsea Fringehttp://www.chelseafringe.com
a festival of flowers, gardens and gardening across LondonTue, 03 Mar 2015 15:51:58 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Everything you wanted to know about putting on a Fringe event but were too afraid to ask…http://www.chelseafringe.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-putting-on-a-fringe-event-but-were-too-afraid-to-ask/
http://www.chelseafringe.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-putting-on-a-fringe-event-but-were-too-afraid-to-ask/#commentsWed, 11 Feb 2015 17:48:20 +0000http://www.chelseafringe.com/?p=16164

Harriot Lane Fox is part of the team that answers emails to the Chelsea Fringe inbox – she gives friendly advice on how to take part in the festival. Here she tells us more about what being a green-fingered impresario involves.

What kind of projects is the Fringe looking for? The Chelsea Fringe manifesto, if that doesn’t sound too up-the-revolution, is fantastically inclusive. We celebrate anything to do with gardens and gardening as long as it’s legal. The basic ingredient is plants but that could be growing them – in allotments, on round-abouts, behind private front doors, up posh hotel walls; turning them into art or high fashion, serenading them, writing odes, telling stories, putting them on the menu and even into cocktail shakers. In fact, it’s probably easier to say what we’re not looking for (that would be burger vans; thanks for getting in touch but we’re not that kind of festival!).

What makes a good Fringe project? The best ones really engage their audiences, non-gardeners as well as the green-fingered. For instance, last year we had a new medicinal garden where visitors could learn how to brew up potions, a celebration of sci-fi author John Wyndham with a triffid-making workshop, and a mobile ice-cream machine using community-grown plants to create crazy flavours. I know that if I get a tingle from the first email enquiry, so will our visitors when they read the listing.

The other ingredient is more practical. While we can help projects discover their inner Fringe-y-ness, in the end they have to be well organised and self-propelled.

What happens once my project is approved? We don’t have paid staff (or an office). Instead the Fringe operates a kind of buddy system. Once we think your project is suitable, we hook you up with a volunteer co-ordinator, someone based nearby if possible, to help you sign up. You will need to have all the listing nitty gritty finalised first, and a picture ready, because what you put into the form is what goes online; “TBA” is not OK.

Early-birding is worth it, if you can. Registration gives projects access to tips on marketing and using social media, and our PR person, Rosie, will include you in her Fringe publicity campaign, bolstering your own. Our media partner BBC Radio London has already begun previewing the festival.

We also have two public meetings. The first, on March 4, is a chance to pick the brains of fellow Fringers (Fringies? Fringe-istas?), both co-ordinators and veteran project organisers. The second is in mid-May – the date is to be confirmed – and is when you will collect the branding board to help visitors find you.

Is it possible to set up a project outside London? Absolutely. The Chelsea Fringe has gone viral. We generally say you need five or six events in one place to qualify as a satellite fringe, and this year we are adding Henley-on-Thames, Milan, Melbourne and Nagoya (Japan), to Ljubljana, Brighton, Bristol, Kent and Vienna. There are also lone events and other projects only exist online.

Is there any funding or sponsorship available? Not unless you raise it yourself. To say we operate on a shoestring is to flatter the Fringe bank balance. That’s why we have so many different registration rates, to enable lone artists and garden designers, underfunded community groups and primary schools, and every size of charity to take part. This is a grass-roots festival.

Interested in taking part? Email info@chelseafringe.com

]]>http://www.chelseafringe.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-putting-on-a-fringe-event-but-were-too-afraid-to-ask/feed/0Roll up, Roll up! Registration is now openhttp://www.chelseafringe.com/roll-up-roll-up-registration-is-now-open/
http://www.chelseafringe.com/roll-up-roll-up-registration-is-now-open/#commentsSat, 24 Jan 2015 09:26:28 +0000http://www.chelseafringe.com/?p=21603Be the first to register your project for the Chelsea Fringe 2015. If you’ve already been assigned a Project Co-ordinator, ask them for the password that allows you to begin registration (see Get Involved). If you have an idea for a project but haven’t yet contacted the Chelsea Fringe please email us at info@chelseafringe.com to discuss your idea.

For details of our registration rates, click on Get Involved. NB There’s an Early Bird discount of 10% for all registrations made by 31 March.

]]>http://www.chelseafringe.com/roll-up-roll-up-registration-is-now-open/feed/0The Chelsea Fringe is back for 2015!http://www.chelseafringe.com/the-chelsea-fringe-back-in-2015/
http://www.chelseafringe.com/the-chelsea-fringe-back-in-2015/#commentsMon, 09 Jun 2014 14:35:16 +0000http://www.chelseafringe.com/?p=21540The alternative gardening festival, the Chelsea Fringe has set the date for 2015 and is now open for submissions. The festival runs from May 16 to June 7: that’s 22 days, four weekends and one Bank Holiday Monday to fill with exciting gardening projects and events.

The 2014 Fringe was a huge success, with more than 250 community gardening activities, garden/art installations and happenings, walks, talks, food events, open days, exhibitions and performances across London and beyond. There was excellent coverage in the national media – newspapers, magazines, radio and television. We also launched a broadcast partnership with BBC Radio London (the Robert Elms show), which is to continue in
2015.

We are inviting individuals and organisations, first-timers and Fringe veterans, to register their interest and to discuss what they might like to do for the Chelsea Fringe 2015. Please get in touch with us via email (info@chelseafringe.com) if you would like to be involved.

If you’d like to join our friendly team of volunteer project co-ordinators, please contact alex@chelseafringe.com

Or why not become a Friend of the Fringe? You’ll enjoy advance information on events, insider trails and more – plus the satisfaction of supporting a grass-roots festival that’s bringing plants and gardening to unexpected corners of towns and cities around the globe.

The Chelsea Fringe is volunteer-run and unfunded, operating as a not-for-profit Community Interest Company [CIC].

The roof topvegplot is a retreat from the city as well as a productive potager.

High among the chimneypots of Fitzrovia is Wendy Shillam’s vegetable plot, which she’s opening for Chelsea Fringe. We climbed her stairs to find out more

What has rooftop gardening taught you?There is always more to learn, but now I reckon I can tell you a lot more about urban veg growing than many of the books. For example, only this year I’ve discovered the magical combination of pansies and lettuces. The deep, velvet colour of the purple pansies looks amazing against the spring-fresh lettuces. Like every good combination there’s a practical advantage. I’ve discovered that pansies keep the slugs from eating the greens. Pansy flowers are good to eat in salads. And the slugs obviously agree.

Are there any drawbacks to gardening where you do?
I live right in the heart of central London, surrounded by air conditioning extracts and ventilation systems. There is so much pollution here from traffic, we have to dust every day. Leave a white shelf for half an hour and it will get grimy. That dust is mainly caused by particulate matter from diesel engine exhausts. I’m surrounded by supermarkets selling produce from Chile, Morocco and South Africa. If I want to buy local it is very difficult.

And how about the advantages?
My flat roof is one of thousands around here. If a few more people did as I do, then we could really cut down on the food miles that cast unnecessary CO² into the atmosphere. If people stopped air conditioning their offices, and planted something – anything – on the roof, we could make a fundamental difference to what is termed the urban heat-island effect. That is the overheating that comes from too much energy use and too much concrete. My records show that temperatures up here are about 5° warmer than those in the greenbelt, just a few miles away.

When the rain falls on my roof, the flow of water is interrupted by the plants, which absorb it to make our food. When the sun shines the temperature is moderated by plants that absorb light energy and carbon dioxide and pump out oxygen. My rooftopvegplot is not just a micro-farm producing delicious food for our table, it is a wonderful moderator of climate and pollution that, if replicated across London, could radically improve the city’s environment. And when I need fresh veg I have no need to get into a car and steam off to a supermarket. I can just saunter up to the roof to pick my own.

Why did you join Chelsea Fringe?
I can’t change the world, but I can show how small personal actions, replicated hundreds of times, by hundreds of different people, could make a massive difference. That’s why I’m opening the garden for the Chelsea Fringe this year.

Rooftopvegplot is open on 5, 6 and 7 June from 1pm to 6pm. Wendy Shillam writes a blog about her garden at rooftopvegplot.com

]]>http://www.chelseafringe.com/rooftopvegplot/feed/0What’s on this weekendhttp://www.chelseafringe.com/whats-on-this-weekend-3/
http://www.chelseafringe.com/whats-on-this-weekend-3/#commentsFri, 06 Jun 2014 00:05:53 +0000http://www.chelseafringe.com/?p=21530It’s the final weekend of the Chelsea Fringe, the alternative gardening festival. It has featured around 250 projects in London, Brighton, Bristol, Vienna, Ljubljana, Turin, Kent, Norwich and online and has been a huge success so far.

Now’s your chance to catch the final events. Some have been running for the entire festival (see the panels to the right and the events in chronological order below). Some are one-off happenings, listed below. Many are free, so do pop along and help the Chelsea Fringe go out with a bang.

A Real Surprise: visit a tiny, restful garden packed with space-saving ideas in Clapton, East London

Embassy Gardens Open Day – open day at the Embassy Gardens, next to the new US embassy and at the heart of the new linear park, a green ribbon that will connect Vauxhall town centre with Battersea Power Station

Haven – enter a 3m x 3m scented tent in Crystal Palace Food Market. Peer through a lens at tiny mosses and take part in mini meditations and yoga

Pop Up Bee Garden – poetry, prose and fascinating facts about bees and other pollinators at Biddenden Vineyards, Kent

Embassy Gardens Open Day – open day at the Embassy Gardens, next to the new US embassy and at the heart of the new linear park, a green ribbon that will connect Vauxhall town centre with Battersea Power Station

Lost Gardens of the Strand Walk – explore the gardens that would have bloomed along the Strand in years gone by. Hosted by ‘Old Map Man’, Ken Titmuss, and poet Sarah Salway

The grounds of Clapton Park Estate are like no others. Organiser John Little tells us more.

How did your connection with the Clapton Park Estate come about?My firm, The Grass Roof Company, tendered for the grounds-maintenance contract in 2002, and the residents liked our plans for wild flowers and food growing, as well as adapting the maintenance work to fit with their own comments and ideas. Clapton Park Estate is unusual in that it’s been run by its tenants since 1994, which means they can choose their own contractors – even small contractors, who wouldn’t usually get the chance to work on public spaces like these.

What has the experience been like since then?It’s been a privilege to look after the green space on Clapton Park, and over the years we’ve built up a wonderful relationship with the residents, who are involved in virtually all the new community gardens and public-food planting. Grounds maintenance has always been the Cinderella of horticulture, so this has been a great opportunity to respond to local people and tweak the techniques to improve biodiversity, reduce herbicide use by using wild flowers and to look for new food-growing space for residents.

How have the grounds developed over time?We all wanted people to notice and use the green space. At first native trees and shrubs were a default for any new planting, but for the last five years we have only used fruit trees and bushes, as well as planting many herb beds for everyone to use. We now have over 200 fruit trees and bushes around the estate, with over 40 growing plots for residents. Good for wildlife, good for residents, and an ongoing public food-source!

What will visitors be able to see? We’ll have lots of fun stuff for the kids, free packs of the flower seed we use along our famous railings, and amazing food stalls in Gilpin Square, plus free drinks, snacks and music. Come and see us: you won’t see a council estate like it anywhere else!

Open on 7 June from 11am to 7pm, with guided tours of the estate at 12noon and 4pm

]]>http://www.chelseafringe.com/chelsea-fringe-on-doddington-place-gardens-blog/feed/0Poppy power in Kenthttp://www.chelseafringe.com/poppy-power-in-kent/
http://www.chelseafringe.com/poppy-power-in-kent/#commentsTue, 03 Jun 2014 08:00:31 +0000http://www.chelseafringe.com/?p=16697Poppies are a feature of the Chelsea Fringe this year. We meet the owners of the Walled Nursery in Kent are working with local primary schools to commemorate World War I – they tell us more.

The Walled Nursery is run by husband and wife team, Monty and Emma Davies, and sits in the grounds of Tongswood Estate in Hawkhurst, Kent. It lost fourteen of its workers during the First World War.

‘We wanted to do something in the walled garden that would be a memorial to the men who died and that involved children from our local school,’ explains Emma. ‘We chatted to the headmaster at our children’s primary school and came up with the idea of a poppy wreath – we would provide wooden poppies, one for each year group of the 14 primary schools in the High Weald, and the schools would run competitions and then select the best design. The seven poppies will then be made into a wreath to represent that school.’

The Walled Nursery will be awash with poppies, real and fabricated, during the Chelsea Fringe. There’s already a poppy wreath sculpture there that’s part of a 2012 installation by Cornish artist Vivian Pedley who had been inspired by the sandstone memorial in the estate grounds. The children’s wreaths will be surrounded by plantings of hundreds of scarlet field poppies which have been sown, ready for 17 May, and there’ll be poppy seed cakes and snacks for sale. A percentage of all plant and refreshment sales made during the Chelsea Fringe will go to Gardening Leave, the charity that uses the very special nature of walled gardens to provide gardening therapy for troubled veterans of war.